


pravilabhate

by toujours_nigel



Category: Mahabharata - Vyasa
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Post-War, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 21:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18836920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: Yuyutsu comes home to Hastinapuri, in the wake of the war.





	pravilabhate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Golden_Daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Daughter/gifts).



> for the prompt "Dushala and any of her brothers: soft spot".

They meet again in Hastinapuri’s palace, its bright halls now a haven for ghosts, and Dushala screams at him for clinging to life when their brothers are dead. Her brothers, her husband, the son she bore him in great sorrow: all dead, all ash, all only memory.

He frees a dagger from its sheath on his belt and hands it to her by the hilt, unwraps his uttariya from around his throat. “Aim true, little sister, or let me pass.”

Dushala laughs, all her tinkling silver bells cracked and harsh. “I spent twenty years unable to kill a man as he slept beside me. How could I kill my father’s last son?”

“Then let me pass.”

Dushala folds her hands together and dips her head in a brief bow. “Welcome, Dhartarashtra, to the palace of your forefathers. Fear not, none now live who might seek your death for betrayal.”

A rank falsehood: Queen Gandhari loved her sons through all the pain they caused her, and her grandsons with every breath she drew; the hatred of his many sisters-in-law is a fading and faithful echo of Dushala’s hatred; Father is benumbed by the death of his sons and his own failure to kill Bhima, but it will pass and too quickly.

There are palaces where the King’s children with his dasis are themselves servants, set to the filthiest tasks to wash from their bodies the sanctity of royal blood. He has visited such palaces, in his years shadowing Prince Vidura, and watched enthroned kings flinch; he has fought and laughed beside Sama and Saha when his presence as envoy was construed as an insult and twisted into war. He did not run to the Pandavas for hope of joy; he was happy in Hastinapuri, boy and man, among brothers who shrugged off his birth: how else, in a home where Queen Satyavati’s memory cast a long shadow and Mahamati Vidura counselled kings? He was happy, and now he is at every turn hated.

Dushala’s hatred at least is honest. Princess Bhanumati treats him with exquisite politeness, as if some ambassador from a hostile state, as if he has not spent sleepless nights with her while the twins raved with fever and Duryodhana paced the halls in Gandhar on the other side of passes turned impenetrable with winter.

The worst blow is his mother’s anger: bewildered and directionless, despairing about his lack of loyalty, to the father who acknowledged him, the brothers who called him brother. He cajoles her a long week before she deigns to look at him, another before she agrees to leave Queen Gandhari’s chambers and speak to him alone, live in his chambers that were once Vindha and Anuvindha’s, let him embrace her. Her body in his arms is shiveringly old, but his own hair is more grey than black now, and his father for all his strength newly ancient with his sons killed in their prime, his grandsons slaughtered in their youth.

Still, he is alive. It is enough. It is a grace unhoped for, with Kurukshetra blood-soaked, with children enthroned and old men summoned from sannyas to guide them. He is alive and he is home, and the rhythms of Hastinapuri will soon wind themselves around him, draw him into the eternal song. If the palace is empty of its princes, there are princesses enough to fill the halls, and such of the grandchildren as were too young to fight. Before his father’s birth there were three women in the Kuru royal household, and a stubbornly ascetic man. After Kurukshetra there are, oh not a hundred—not all his brothers had inclined to women any more than he had himself nor had all who had, married nor all their wives survived—but enough, enough there will be no shortage of eager young aunts and uncles and cousins to help Prince Parikshit on his way to the twin thrones in several decades more.

Now he is an infant scarcely five months out of the safety of his mother’s womb, small to Yuyutsu’s practised eye, and the best envoy for peace Indraprastha could have sent. His mother is young to have had a child, but she was young to have been married, young to have been widowed, a laughing pawn passed from King to King to secure an alliance. He had heard that she had endeared herself to Abhimanyu in their year together, and to Arjuna while he had been disguised as her nrityaguru; he had heard also that she was afraid of her mothers-in-law, and had not blamed her for it. He had met few in his life who were unafraid of Panchali in full flare, and even Princess Subhadra, laughing and hopeful, had her share of Yadava tenacity.

Panchali’s light is dimmed now, Princess Subhadra slow to smile, but their husbands are yet living if their children are not, and the women who lost husbands and sons and brothers and fathers and uncles and kin to their blows, women who can scarcely bear to look even at Yuyutsu, are unlikely to set aside their beloved dead or make of them a common cause with the victorious wives of the Pandavas. He is unsure whether Panchali notices, but it is difficult for Princess Uttara to watch conversations fall silent when her mothers-in-law enter the Inner Palace, to watch Princesses Bhanumati and Dushala leave any room into which Princess Subhadra steps, pay every courtesy to Queen Mother Kunti and Empress Draupadi and then depart. She grows quieter still, nodding and humming out answers to direct questions, keeping her eyes fixed on her son when she’s allowed to hold him. It is not very often: Prince Parikshit is everyone’s best beloved, carried around by great-uncles and great-aunts, felt over by King Dhritarashtra and Queen Gandhari as though he will wilt if left untouched.

 

“That child will never learn to walk if this continues,” Dushala says one day as Parikshit is being carried around the night gardens in Bhima’s arms at dusk, the flowers opening and drowning the night in their perfume.

Yuyutsu looks up, startled. They’ve been sitting in the study overlooking the garden in silence for an hour while Yuyutsu summarises and comments on a decade of Hastinapuri finances to show Yudhisthira and Dushala sorts skeins of thread for a half-finished tapestry. It had been Nandaka and Upanandaka’s study and holds the westering light longest; neither of them had been fond of early mornings and Upanandaka had loved to lie in the night garden and watch the stars: when he had turned twenty Duryodhana had had a pavilion built for him that he might do so in comfort.

“You did,” he tells Dushala when it becomes evident she’s speaking to him. “Your feet never touched the ground unless Queen Gandhari insisted upon it, and even she far preferred you in her arms than otherwise.”

“I remember none of it,” she says, and sighs. “It was not so with Suratha. He was walking before he was one, crawling at six months of age.”

“A precocious child.”

Dushala’s mouth twists, her lovely face creasing in anger. “A child without recourse, killed by Bhima on the field of battle. He sought to protect his father who loved him not.”

“Princess.”

“My son left a widow as well, and children: a boy of four sits on the throne of Sindhu now, his sister is two. He was older than Abhimanyu, of whose death we so endlessly hear, of whose fate we are all to be ashamed.”

“Princess,” he says again, louder and more urgent. “I beg you, do not give voice to your grief so unthinkingly.”

“Will they slay me, or exile me, brother? Will you carry tales of my malcontent? Do your beloved cousins not sing of it, the many lives they took in payment of Arjuna’s favoured son? My son, my nephews, the children of one I considered a brother, two dozen flames extinguished because one was snuffed out. And now an infant is the light of our line, when ten of our nieces and nephews yet live and Vivinsati, Dhridhasandhu and Suvak’s sons left their wives children before they were killed.”

“Sister!” He catches Dushala’s hands in his, thread spilling out of them onto her lap. “They won. Leave it be, I beg you.”

“You won,” Dushala retorts and frees her hands. “You won while our brothers bled onto Kurukshetra and ascended to heaven for their bravery. Duryodhana whom you so despised, Duhshasana, Duhsaha, Jalasandha, Sama, Saha, all our brothers are now in heaven with our forefathers. You who have survived, you will be judged for your actions when you die of comfortable age.”

“So will we all. Your grandchildren depend on you, doubtless your daughter-in-law as well. Do not leave them desolate.”

Dushala laughs a bitter little laugh. “Do you think, truly, that the Pandavas would kill me? A grieving woman, and their kin besides, when they so vaunt their virtue?”

“No. But there are those among their allies who might urge exile for you, who will look at you and see only Duryodhana’s sister and Jayadratha’s wife. Panchal lost many of its princes, too, and the Yadavas suffered losses and greatly mourn Abhimanyu.”

“The Yadavas will be here?” Here at last is the sister whom he watched growing up, Shakuni’s favoured pupil, a deft gambler who distrusts chance.

“Everyone will be here, to witness Parikshit being anointed Crown Prince of Hastinapuri and Indraprastha. The Yadavas are on the road already, and will be here in a month.”

“A month,” Dushala repeats. “I must tell Princess Bhanumati.”

 

It takes less than a week for Princess Uttara to be included in the conversations of his brothers’ daughters-in-law. There are only six of them, three mothers and a fourth pregnant, girls some years older than the Princess of Matsya, who sit together in the coconut grove behind the palace of the Crown Prince.

Prince Parikshit, now, and Bhanumati had left her home of long years with all ceremony two days after the Pandavas arrived from Indraprastha. Princess Uttara lives in it, alone with her son and a coterie of maids, her mothers-in-law living instead in Queen Kunti’s chambers. It is the quietest part of the Hastinapuri palace, when for decades it had been the loudest, ringing with Duryodhana’s laughter and the clamouring of the Kauravas eager to see their brother and favoured sister-in-law, women singing in Bhanumati’s chambers and leaving her their children or stealing her twins away, Karna and King Shakuni deep in conversation in the Prince’s inner chamber, a dozen games being played all morning and referees sought. In the coconut grove there are still remnants of the archery targets Karna had hung up, first to practise when dancing attendance upon Duryodhana bored him, and then to train Lakshmana when her desire to learn failed to outpace her dread of her brother and cousins’ laughter. A place of love and long conspiracy, and no place at all to leave children alone, whether the Crown Prince himself or his mother, who has yet to spin out sixteen summers.

Yuyutsu visits her often, whiles away mornings while little Parikshit is fed and bathed and dressed by her dasis, whisked away to visit one or another of his great-uncles or his grandfather, who dotes on him with a father’s love. Some mornings they come to take Parikshit themselves, and spend an hour or two with Uttara, but Duryodhana’s chambers hold a certain horror for them, and Yuyutsu is glad of it, cannot bear to watch Arjuna leaning into a patch of sunlight that had burnished Karna’s shoulders for years, Nakula and Sahadeva sharing Urnanabha and Sunabha’s favourite seat, long-limbed Bhima slumped in the window-seat watching the girls gossiping below. He visits Uttara with guilt in his heart, and with gratitude, torn between his Kaurava blood and Pandava loyalties.

He is with her the morning Princess Ekaparnika’s maid comes into her chambers and dips into a bow and relays her mistress’ desire for the Princess’ company. Uttara stares, and hurries over the windows, and turns and looks to him for permission. When he nods she flies down the stairs, and he can hear young voices raised in laughter as he makes his own, slower, descent.

Princess Ekaparnika is twenty, six months widowed, a princess of Kalinga, Princess Bhanumati’s niece. In three days she is one of Uttara’s closest friends, second only to Princess Tanirika, King Shakuni’s granddaughter and heiress to the throne of Gandhar. In a fortnight more she is enmeshed in the circle of the younger women, always arm in arm with them, sometimes laughing, often doting on their children. Parikshit is the youngest of them, but not by much and not for long, Princess Charumati of Bahlika swelling like the waxing moon and brightening by the day. They are resplendent in their whites, their fates tied to a clan they hardly know by the infants they have borne to dead young men, all hope of remarriage snuffed out by the first breath their children drew in: it is sweet to see them become friends as they might have had their elders not blundered into war.

He is not suspicious until he finds Princess Chitratanu weaving gold ribbons into Princess Subhadra’s hair. Thirty-three years she’s been a Kaurava princess, and never has Duhsaha’s arrogant Kekayi wife deigned to tend to another woman, not even Bhanumati whom she loves as a sister. Now with her husband dead, with her sons and sons-in-law dead, she’s attending Arjuna’s Yadava wife and smiling as she hands her a mirror of gleaming silver.

Yuyutsu goes to Dushala’s chambers as quick as he can and still be unobtrusive, and finds there Bhanumati, whom he expected, and Vrishali, still trembling on the brink of some argument that has stalled at his entry, its echoes still ringing in the air.

“I had a question for my sister,” he hazards, and Dushala offers him a miniscule nod, gestures him to one of the cushioned niches scattered about her receiving room.

“We shall speak again in time,” Bhanumati says with the tight smile that had always made her brothers-in-law hang back, and their wives agree with whatever the Crown Princess suggested. A time or two, it had even stopped Duryodhana in his tracks.

Vrishali tosses her head, her one thick braid whipping over her shoulder, and says, “I care not who knows of it, I shall not make peace with the Pandavas.”

“None of us is at war with them,” Dushala says. “You must not say such things, as my brother is so quick to remind me.”

“Your brother is dead. Your husband is dead. Your son is dead.”

“Yours is alive,” Bhanumati retorts. “Vrishaketu goes about this palace trailing Arjuna, I hear their bows twang in the astrakshetra.”

“Do you grudge me my one son, when he is being taken from me by my enemies? When I have lit ten pyres to your two, when the sun is gone from my life?”

“No. Your bull was a truer brother to me than any my mother bore, your sons were as high in my heart as any of my other nephews. I have mourned six months with you, dearest, and I am not likely to stop.”

Vrishali takes the hand Princess Bhanumati holds out to her, and lets herself be drawn close, presses a kiss into the parting in her hair still reddened from thirty years and more of vermilion. “I have loved you since you first took my hand and said we would be friends as our husbands were, but I cannot follow you trustingly into the dark.”

“Come to my chambers after our evening-meal, and I will tell you every secret in my heart.”

“Princess,” Yuyutsu interjects, “I must know something of what you have planned, not every secret in your heart, but at least whether you are likely to knife the Pandavas in their beds.”

Vrishali’s head comes up, furious, her braid undulating like a striking snake down her back. “You think we would be in the Pandavas’ beds?”

“I have always been told you matched your husband perfectly, O Queen of Anga,” Yuyutsu says, carefully smiling. “You know best of all, the things he was willing to do for love.”

“You dare besmirch my husband, you who betrayed your brothers?”

“From what I hear,” Yuyutsu says pleasantly, “he did much the same. I do not know whether ignorance lends innocence to such shame as his.”

Vrishali screams, fighting against Bhanumati’s hands tight on her forearms, beyond words with rage.

“Enough,” Dushala says, hissing quiet, Queen Gandhari’s voice from when they were all children. “I will not have such violence in my widowhood as marked my marriage. We intend the Pandavas no harm, nor even Princess Uttara to whom you have taken such great liking; we owe you no other truth.”

Yuyutsu bows over his folded hands. “You are most generous, to your dismal brother.”

 

He doesn’t ask around, doesn’t prod. He doesn’t want the Pandavas to linger or investigate, doesn’t want his sister or sisters-in-law to be harmed, exiled, executed; he doesn’t want little Princess Uttara to have her heart broken and find her friends were false.

And then the mystery unravels itself, as mysteries are wont to. Panchajanya sounds at the Elephant Gate, and the Yadavas stream into the palace, all dancing eyes and grim smiles: Krishna and his wives; Satyaki; Princes Pradyumna and Bhanu with their wives and coteries; and Balabhadra a golden shadow behind Princess Lakshmana rendered visible by the absence of Samba.

“You should have told me,” he whispers to Dushala as the Pandavas embrace and lead their Yadava kin to their chambers, Panchali girlish ensconced between Krishna and Satyabhama, Arjuna arm-in-arm with Satyaki, Rukmini elegant as a swan beside Subhadra. “I would have helped.”

Dushala leans up, tipping her bejewelled head against his shoulder in a show of sibling amity for watching eyes. “Brother,” she croons. “You will.”

Lakshmana was born in the second year of the Kingdom Divided, when Indraprastha was still Khandavprastha, an array of villages clustering within the swallowing forest, when Duryodhana and Karna rode out on wars of conquest. She grew up everybody’s best beloved, fearless and affectionate, her every word law. And then there was Samba. Eight years of marriage have driven eighteen of imperiousness from Lakshmana, turned her timorous; she holds herself at a distance from everyone, dips into a bow before Bhanumati can gather her into an embrace, trails the Yadavas quietly to their quarters.

“I will,” Yuyutsu promises. 

There is little he can do in the first days. The Yadavas are feasted, and Lakshmana sits beside Princess Prabhavati, eats what she eats, drinks what she drinks, offers no opinions. Princess Bhanumati attends the first feast, to Yudhisthira’s delighted surprise, and none after it.

On the fourth morning, the Yadavas go hunting: Princess Prabhavati riding neck-and-neck with her husband; Krishna driving Subhadra and Arjun in a two-horsed chariot skimming lightly over the road; a small contingent of the Narayani Sena grim and competent in their wake. Princess Uttara stands at her window looking at the cloud of dust travel down the road, and turning back squeezes Parikshit tight till he squeals, then pets his thick curls in apology.

“You might have accompanied them, Princess,” Yuyutsu ventures while Parikshit decides whether the pearls braided into his mother’s hair are palatable. “In Hastinapuri we restrict neither wives nor widows, and I cannot imagine it is otherwise in the domain of the Empress Yajnaseni.”

“I have never hunted,” Uttara says, lifting a wan face towards him. “My brother was fond of it, and my uncle. Prince Bhima tore my uncle to pieces, and the King of Madradesh killed my brother.”

“Emperor Yudhisthira killed King Shalya, whom he had long been accustomed to call his uncle because of his youngest brothers. You know the fate of my own brothers. Kinstrife costs us all too dear.”

“My husband followed his father and uncles, and my family was bound to his by our marriage. You alone fought against your kin, for what you thought was right.”

“I have spent much of my life deploring the actions of my brothers and loving them, shall I change now, having lost them to their fates? Then, too, I was not alone in this; King Shalya commanded an army against his beloved nephews, and the King of Anga strove against his brothers.”

“But King Shalya was tricked and had no choice in the matter, and Karna was as wicked as the Kauravas. What great grief it must have been to Queen Mother Kunti, to know how evil her son had grown, and to be helpless to change it!”

She is a child, speaking in full earnest, and confident her words will be taken as sincerely as they are meant. He cannot tell her how many nights in forty years he had spent with Karna, in conversation and when words had spent their worth; how he envied Karna’s place in the world and Karna his knowledge of his parentage; how Duryodhana had answered Karna’s hunger for affection with careless bounty; how they had vied in feats on the astrakshetra and in gaining Bhanumati’s friendship. He can tell her none of it, when Karna is the murderer of her husband.

Instead he says, facile as any elder unwilling to answer difficult questions, “Your uncle was slain for grave misdeeds, Princess, but though your mother is a wise woman yet she must mourn the loss of her brother.”

Uttara nods, picks Parikshit up again and clasps him shield-like before her. It is a relief when the door creaks open, doubtless the nursemaid come to fetch away Parikshit. He often stays with Uttara for the day-meal, but it will scarcely rouse suspicion if he declines.

Instead it is Lakshmana at the door, for a moment red with fury, the next pale with lowered eyes and folded hands. “A thousand pardons, Princess. I had thought to find my mother here, and in my eagerness forgot how her altered station in life must have affected her living quarters. Doubtless she is to be found in my grandmother’s chambers; I shall seek her there by your leave.”

“I did not ask her to leave,” Uttara protests, with a quickness that leads Yuyutsu to believe she must have wanted to  disclaim any part in Bhanuati’s departure since it had happened.

Lakshmana dips her head in acceptance and Yuyutsu says, before she further abases herself, “I can take you to your mother, Princess, if you so wish, or one of the dasis if that please you better.”

“I would not dream of so disturbing you when you are the companion of Princess Uttara, and yourself my most honoured uncle,” Lakshmana demurs. “Should Queen Gandhari still be in her accustomed chambers, I can find my way there even after all these years that have lapsed.”

Yuyutsu does not laugh, but only because Uttara looks bewildered and distraught and he would not cause her pain over such a trifle. Delight wells up in him, suffusing his blood: King Shakuni himself would be proud of Lakshmana, her honeyed words like a sharp knife sliding between the ribs, her eyes still cast down and hiding any glint of malice or pleasure. Her husband hasn’t broken her.

“It can only ever be a pleasure to reunite mother and daughter after years have separated them, and how much greater when our family is so broken on the wheel of fate, and how fortuitous too that grief binds us together.”

Lakshmana laughs, her head swinging up and her eyes sparkling. “I am lessoned, Uncle, enough. We must not further discomfit Princess Uttara.”

“I am pleased to have your company,” Uttara says, rallying. “My husband spoke of you with great affection, knowing you better than he did his siblings.”

No difficult thing, with the next youngest of his brothers seven years older than him, and all of them raised in distant Panchal while Abhimanyu grew, though not to manhood, in Dwaraka by the sea.

“In Lord Krishna’s palace are many halls,” Lakshmana says, “for his many wives and their many sons. His sister dwelt with her own parents, and I saw my cousin a handful of times every year; it was kind of him to think of me as kin, when he had so many other cousins vying for his attention.”

“You told him stories of his Kuru ancestors and he found it a great joy,” Uttara insists. “He shared them with me, when we were newly wed: of Ila who could change her shape, and Shakuntala who understood the speech of beasts, and Queen Satyavati who shaped her own destiny. They were of great help to me, and still are, as I try as best I can to be a Kuru princess.”

Into the following silence, Lakshmana asks, peremptory, “Is this your son,” and when Uttara nods, adds, “he looks like his father.”

“Princess Subhadra says so,” Uttara agrees.

“I never saw him so young, of course; he was ten when I was taken to Dwaraka. But his face held the shape of childhood for years, and he smiled just so, eyes nearly closing. Your son will have dimples.”

“He still smiled when we met,” Uttara says, “but not often.”

“It wasn’t a time for many smiles. Uncle, you’ll take me to my mother now.”

 

Yudhisthira, when not holding court, still prefers the tower in the western gardens the Pandavas were allotted when first they came to Hastinapuri, even now that he is Emperor of fifty kingdoms, and enough lie bare that he is beginning to set here a brother, there a nephew on the throne. King Satyajit has Panchal reunited under his reign, Nakula will soon take his uncle’s seat in Madradesh while his brother rules over Matsya; the Yadavas, too, will return to the homes from which they were driven.

Yuyutsu finds him in the little room under the eaves of the tower, in solemn conversation with Uncle Vidura, and loiters, self-conscious as a boy, even though it is his work they are discussing, his commentary on Hastinapuri’s budget, its excesses and deficits. Because it is his work they are discussing, the best minds of their family even before its destruction.

Yudhisthira calls for wine when their uncle has departed, and Yuyutsu drains his cup in one long pull, feels it settle honey-sweet in his veins, strength-giving. When he looks up, Yudhisthira is favouring him with a quizzical smile.

“I did not know you for a deep drinker.”

“Only to drive fear out,” Yuyutsu demurs. “I drank of nights while we fought, only a cup to let me sleep, but I drank.”

Yudhisthira runs his fingers over the rim of his own brimming cup, his smile dropping off. “And what do you fear now?”

“Only spectres of childhood and youth. There was talk of me training with Mahamati Vidura, though I never had the temperament for it.”

“I did,” Yudhisthira says unnecessarily, as though that had not formed the greatest part of Yuyutsu’s shame for years. “Come sit with me a moment.”

From this tower, like that in the Crown Prince’s quarters, one can see a wide vista of Hastinapuri; but where Duryodhana looked over gardens laid out in strict geometry or left gorgeously wild, Yudhisthira looks out at the labyrinth of kitchens and stables and armouries: all the hidden parts that keep the palaces running smoothly. Even Yuyutsu’s old rooms look out upon a lotus pond swarmed by swans.

“When I was as young as Princess Uttara, and as new to Hastinapuri as she is now, I would sit here every hour I could spare and look at Bhima learning from the cooks, Arjuna stealing into the armoury, the twins befriending stable-hands and cattle-herds, and I would envy them their freedom and wish for an elder brother who would protect me and turn me free that I might sit for hours with the sages and philosophers whom I loved.”

“And when you found you’d had a brother, he was one who had worked with your enemy and destroyed you on the battlefield.”

“That scarcely needed forgiving,” Yudhisthira smiles. “In his fourteenth year my son could beat me with any weapon I chose.”

“You won against King Shalya.”

“A great victory, against a man who had seen thirty more summers than I. I do not like flattery, nor do I see the need for it. I’m no warrior of note, nor would be even without such brothers as I have. We were at war, and he had vowed to our mother that he would only try to slay Arjuna, I was safe enough. It is nothing that needs forgiving.”

“He was foremost among Duryodhana’s councillors, save only King Shakuni.”

“He was foremost among Duryodhana’s friends,” Yudhisthira says. “Shall I judge a man for having a loyal heart, when it is the loyalty of men that has kept me so long among the living? It is not that, either.”

“I shall drink another cup of your wine if you keep me guessing,” Yuyutsu laughs, crossing the room to pour sura from its chased silver flask. Panchalan work, with sapphires winking in the linked peacock feathers around the base: lovely.

“Drink it and welcome. It is a strange thing to me to know I had a brother and not know him save as a distant enemy, when I can recognise my brothers by their very breath. I am told he was generous.”

“In time he gave away his armour,” Yuyutsu says, “but I have known him to be selfish about affection, petty in matters of status, jealous of the prestige accorded to others.”

“You would find nobody who knew of King Karna who knew not this,” Yudhisthira chides. “Indeed I have wondered whether it was this that made him strive so to dishonour Draupadi.”

“Majesty?”

“He sought her hand in marriage, as the whole world did; doubtless he desired her, as the whole world did. It is nothing for which a man needs be forgiven. I had lived thirty years upon the bountiful earth before I met Panchali, and none of the women I saw in those years ever inflamed me as she did then, or does now when our marriage is near thirty years in the past and we have seen our son grow and die too young. Yet every four years in five I have looked upon her and found a sister and a friend, lovely as a tree in full bloom still, but better loved for the gems of her mind.” Yudhisthira grimaces. “If he was generous, if he was loyal, if he was a man of honour, how then could he behave with Panchali as he did?”

“I am no philosopher,” Yuyutsu demurs, and drinks. “To me it seems that as each of us has a great virtue distinct from others, so too have we our vices. Karna was one noted always for the love he bore his parents, his sons, his wife, and Duryodhana; but he sired ten sons in sixteen years. Perhaps lust was his great vice, as greed was his friend’s.”

“As gambling is mine,” Yudhisthira replies, and smiles. “You must not be afraid to speak the truth to me; if I knew it not myself, certainly I have had it shouted at me enough these dozen years and longer.”

“I would scarce expect less of such a one as the Empress,” Yuyutsu agrees.

“Of all the actions in my life, it is that I regret, to have brought my beloved one to such dishonour as dealt to her by Karna.”

“It was at that moment I truly understood the evil that dwelt in his heart, to look upon a woman robed in such fury and still hunger for her,” Yuyutsu agrees, because it is true, and truth is the great weapon of the weak around the benevolent strong. “But, Majesty…”

Yudhisthira waves it away. “We have known each other more than forty years, since we were boys of sixteen, and you have fought and bled and killed for my cause. Drink my wine if it pleases you, but speak without fear.”

“You had waged your brothers before you waged your wife,” Yuyutsu says. “Is that no cause for regret?”

“I thought at every turn that I would win back what I had lost. If you have a vice, you must know how sense flees when you are in the grip of it.”

“I am named for my vice,” Yuyutsu tells him, “as you are for your great virtue. I know well how it takes one. But when you had wagered them, and before Draupadi had brought you ashore like the vessel of the divine in a great storm, were you not afraid that you would share in her fate, and your brothers also? Perhaps not Vrikodara, but his great strength could hardly have protected any of you.”

Yudhisthira laughs. “Are you impugning the virtue of the Kuru women?”

“There have been Kuru queens who have borne sons to men not their husbands,” Yuyutsu says cheerfully, “we are famous for it; nor do I find it unthinkable that my sisters-in-law might choose lovers for comfort or consolation with their husbands slain. But I was not speaking of such harm, in speaking of the Pandavas as dasas.”

“I am glad fear has fled your heart,” Yudhisthira says, still smiling. “I did think that Karna might bind Arjuna to a target to perfect his archery, or that Duryodhana might shatter the twins’ skulls with his mace, or that they might starve Bhima to death. But only for a little while, before we were set free by that paragon among women, the wondrous Panchali.”

“A fortuitous escape, and better fortune that she rescued you when herself free, for it would not have been solely with arrows of steel that Karna might have assaulted the comely Arjuna, who he knew not for his own brother, nor the astrakshetra where the sons of Queen Madri, lissome and long-limbed as the horses they love, would have been in greatest danger. Yet you regret only the danger to Draupadi.”

Yudhisthira has paled till he might be King Pandu reborn, though King Pandu never lived to have grey threaded through his hair. “Will you have the fear leave your soul and enter mine? I am a greater fool than I thought.”

“You are our Emperor, and renowned for your wisdom,” Yuyutsu replies. “It dims your glory that you had devoted so little thought to so great a matter.”

“That my brothers might have been brutalised alongside my wife is a lesson I had not thought to learn, and yet for all knowledge I am thankful.”

“And you as well, since you too were Duryodhana’s dasa, before ever you staked Panchali. Duryodhana himself was uxorious, delighting chiefly in Princess Bhanumati, but Majesty, he had brothers enough who would have found joy in it, even did they not love men of a rule.”

Yuyutsu himself, when his chief joy was in the clashing of swords on the astrakshetra, might have dared heroic exploits or slain great beasts for a smile or sweet word from his scholarly cousin, named as though the noble mirror for him. But Yuyutsu has loved always men who come smiling into his arms.

“I am lessoned, cousin,” Yudhisthira spits out. “I am taught. Yet you too were in the gaming halls on that day, and yourself witnessed how it sung through my blood, that I was helpless to stop even knowing how I was cheated.”

“I was there,” Yuyutsu assents. “You waged pots of gold, and King Shakuni won. You waged jewels and King Shakuni won. You waged your chariot and King Shakuni won. In a while you waged nine thousand elephants and nine thousand chariots and the well-loved steeds of the Gandharva Chitraratha, and all such too King Shakuni won. You waged and lost ten thousand carts and draught animals, sixty thousand warriors, and four hundred great jewels, valuing jewels above warriors, warriors above carts, carts above horses, horses above chariots, and chariots above elephants. I was there, Majesty.”

“I am famed for solving riddles,” Yudhisthira allows, “but I do not love them overmuch. Say what you wish cousin, without fear as you are.”

“Before you waged the elephants you waged thousands of dasas and a hundred thousand dasis, valuing the men above the women and both far less than elephants. This you do not regret, nor even that you and your brothers turned the numbers to thousands and five, only that the Empress swelled the numbers of dasis to a hundred thousand and one.”

“Yuyutsu, fearless and foolish do not bear the same meaning.”

“I have fought and bled and killed for you,” Yuyutsu shrugs. “I have turned against my brothers for you, I who am well-named for my great vice. Forgive me, Majesty, but you must have known how dasis fare, in Hastinapuri or any other palace in Bharatvarsha, or you would not so regret the Empress’ addition to that number; I cannot say, of course, how they fare in Indraprastha where the very air is imbued with kindness, yet that you waged them before you chanced your elephants is itself proof of how you prize them.”

“You wish me to prize them as I do my brothers or my wife?”

“No, Majesty, nor above the warriors whom you waged, but perhaps a little higher than eleven women to every elephant? After all, such a woman was sent in a queen’s stead and brought forth Mahamati Vidura, another fell to King Dhritarashtra and birthed me in pain, as Queen Pritha fell to the gods and brought forth heroes, and as the Empress herself might have, had she been so obedient a wife as your mother.” Yuyutsu folds his hands together, rising from his seat, and bows over them. “The wine is potent, I thank you for it.”

He makes his way down the stairs sure-footed and fleet as though those forty years have not yet passed, as hungry for battle as though Panchajanya has just signalled dawn on the sixth day of Kurukshetra.

 

He stays the next three days in his own chambers, eating meals brought in by obsequious servers he cannot recognise, though they are near his own age and he was absent from Hastinapuri for a matter of two years: neither Vinda nor Anuvinda ever married, the one from lack of desire and the other from lack of interest; nor are the Pandavas’ dasas serving any but their own masters. It is a minor mystery, and niggles at him till he ventures back to the Crown Prince’s palace on the fourth day. If he were a smart man, he would stay in his own rooms and speak only when spoken to and do what work the Emperor sees fit to give him and apologise for the temerity of opening his mouth to let unpleasant truth spill out, but if he were a smart man he would not have gone over to the Pandavas and would not be now trying to help his niece, and besides he misses Uttara.

A new target of braided vines has been set up in place of the old, and bows and full quivers lean against the smooth boles of the coconut trees. Ekaparnika’s adventurous daughter has an arrow on her lap, and is attending to the fletchings and the arrowhead with equal curiosity, to the great horror of her nursemaid. The princesses stand in a knot, Ekaparnika and Tanirika on either side of Uttara, coaxing, and Lakshmana before her with a faltering smile.

Dushala, sitting with Tanirika’s son on her lap, beckons him, and when he takes his seat on the ground beside her says, “Let the children have their squabbles, it’ll do them no harm.”

“What do they squabble about?” The little prince reaches out and takes his nose in a sure grip, giggles.

“You can play doting grandfather later, wait a moment,” Dushala says, beckons one of the nursemaid and hands the child over. “The children are squabbling because Vrishaketu was here, and Lakshmana embraced him as a brother, discomfiting your little princess, who likes neither him nor the attention he gets from Arjuna.”

He wants to protest that Uttara is in no way his, but she is laughing and lovely, the daughter he might have hoped for, and Dushala who knows him well will only tease more ruthlessly if he disclaims the rush of affection he feels for the girl. Instead he says, “I knew Lakshmana loved Vrishasena well, but she never had much patience for the children, and Vrishaketu must have been young indeed when she married.”

“Eight,” Dushala says, “older than those of her cousins left in this world, and the last of his father’s sons. Uttara will have to learn to look at him and see neither her husband’s murderer, nor one who seeks to take his place in Arjuna’s heart; how better than to see him loved by one scarcely her friend? Do not interfere.”

“I would not dream of it,” Yuyutsu protests, and indeed as he watches Lakshmana winds her arms around Uttara’s neck and kisses her brow, while Ekaparnika hugs her slender waist and whispers into her jewelled ear. When they draw apart all four girls are smiling, and Lakshmana laughs when Uttara dodges away from the archery target to pick Parikshit up and cover him with kisses. 

“There,” Dushala says, “if only all quarrels could be so easily resolved. Now you must tell me what madness took you to speak so to Yudhisthira.”

“Have I spoken wildly to our Emperor, whose glory cannot be dimmed?”

“The man who served you wine came with my mother from Gandhara, and the men who have been feeding you came with me from Sindhu,” Dushala replies, “so I ask you again, brother, whether you have lost your mind?”

“I was privy to King Shakuni’s counsel but rarely, but I feel at times a better disciple of his than that storm in the world who was our brother.”

Dushala sets her hand palm-up on her knee, and offers up a wan smile when Yuyutsu takes it. “I feel it also. Our brother trusted in his power as all do who are powerful, but King Shakuni’s were the ploys of the weak, as he himself was weak here in Hastinapuri.” 

“Yet neither of us is an apt enough pupil to bring our little bark ashore.”

“Even Uncle but rarely out-maneuvered Krishna.”

“Did he ever in truth? Perhaps it will not prove necessary.”

“You have learnt hope from the Pandavas,” Dushala says, and pats his hand, loosening her own from his grasp.

“I have,” Yuyutsu says peaceably. “I have also learnt from Satyaki how little Samba is loved by any but his raucous peers and his mother.”

“The disagreeable sons of amiable fathers have had wives before this, and kept them, nor has the love of mothers and mothers-in-law kept the girls safe.”

“It might have been better had she given him a son.” He turns to see Dushala staring, eyebrows raised and incredulous. “Will you tell me I’m a man and ignorant? She suffers regardless.”

“A son would tie her to the Yadavas.”

It is not always true: there are women who bear their husbands a child or two in the first years of marriage and take themselves back to the home of their father, and not only in the tribes of the mountains where the woman’s claim on the child is foremost. But it is true for Dushala, who was seventeen when she married, the year after the Pandavas wed the Empress and Duryodhana Bhanumati; she had a daughter at nineteen and the daughter died, a son at twenty and the son lived and wed and fathered children and then died, and only widowhood has brought Dushala home for longer than two months’ journey for two months’ visit, Jayadratha grumbling constantly and making free of the dasis.

“We should have brought you back, the moment we realised what your husband was; when you first came home with Suratha in your arms, we should not have let you return to Sindhu.”

“He would have broken the alliance, easy as a laugh. And my brother needed him.”

Duryodhana was a wilful man, wicked when he could not get his way, the most dogged of enemies and arrogant of princes. But he had loved his siblings, and Dushala best of all, and he had had enough power to have kept Sindhu in his grasp even with Dushala home. “Did he know?”

“I never told him, or Bhanumati, or Mother. Do not ask me the reason; I was in Sindhu three years before I came back for Suratha to be fed, and I thought myself a weakling to be so broken by my marriage, when Bhanumati was thriving with her twins, Chitratanu could not stop smiling, and even my mother had made a home so far from Gandhar.”

“Chitratanu plucked Duhsaha out from a crowd of princes for her own,” Yuyutsu says, longing to hold her. “Bhanumati’s abduction was the greatest of jokes, and, Princess, while I cannot speak to the Queen’s marriage, she had her brother at her side.”

“I have outlived him,” Dushala replies. “I have outlived so many, all of us have: even Lakshmana, who has yet to hear the cuckoo warbling through thirty summers; even your little Uttara, who has not seen twenty springs.”

“Even Prince Parikshit who has not seen one,” Yuyutsu retorts. “It is the nature of life. Shall we say Queen Gandhari will die of longing if her one granddaughter is taken from her? Krishna is wary of her and likely to grant such a harmless boon if it is sought in her name.”

“Mother would never lie, and neither Kanakaya nor Somakriti would be happy to know you’ve forgotten their daughters, to say nothing of Viravi.”

“Their daughters are in the homes of their husbands, and not attending upon their aged grandmother,” Yuyutsu snaps.

“I don’t think Lakshmana has spoken above ten words to Mother in these ten days; she is more devoted to Uttara. We cannot hurry or fumble this.”

They sit in silence, watching Lakshmana loose arrows at the target, and then guide first Ekaparnika, then Tanirika into place, correcting stances while Uttara offers suggestions. Ekaparnika’s first arrow goes wide, and the nursemaids gather their charges and move them into the shelter of the shankhapushpam arch, heavy with flower and heady with perfume.

“She is a splendid archer now, better than she was when she left, and she was good then.”

“Princess Satyabhama has been teaching her,” Dushala says, suddenly smiling. “It is the one thing she likes better in Dwaraka than at home; Karna thought practice would enable her to draw a long bow with which a man might struggle, but Satyabhama has lighter bows she uses herself, especially when shooting from horseback, and has had one made for Lakshmana.”

“It is not enough.”

“It is something. It is more than ever I had in Sindhu, that one of my husband’s family looked and saw Dushala and not simply Jayadratha’s wife or Duryodhana’s sister. That it was Princess Satyabhama, who has the ear of the Empress, and is in her husband’s confidence, and a hero in her own right, that is something indeed.”

“Is it enough?”

Dushala sighs, the lights in her eyes extinguishing themselves. “When Suratha was twelve and his grandfather already a sannyasi, my husband abducted Draupadi and was hunted down by the Pandavas: yet I had to wait a decade longer to be a widow, now when my son is dead beside his father and I am too riddled with misery to take joy from my freedom. Who can know what is enough, when hope is such a thin broth to sustain one? But it is something, and if Satyaki’s stories are true that is something more.”

Lakshmana guides Tanirika into place, pulls her elbow level with her ear and kicks her foot back further. The princess looses her arrow and it sinks deep into the leafy target as the girls laugh and their children applaud.

 

On the fifteenth day of the Yadavas’ visit, Emperor Yudhisthira holds court in Hastinapuri in awful splendour, and with Prince Parikshit in his lap.

“As clear a declaration as any,” Lakshmana murmurs. “Has a day been fixed for the coronation?”

“On Brihaspati’s day,” Yuyutsu murmurs back. “Did you doubt this would happen?”

Yuyutsu himself is unsure of the way of it, of whether Princess Devika’s son too perished in battle childless, that Yudhisthira has to turn to his brother’s grandson. There were many dead in Kurukshetra, but surely the wailing would have been great for Yaudheya. King Shivi has sons and grandsons enough to be in no need of an heir from his daughter.

“No,” Lakshmana says. “What the Yadavas set their minds to, they achieve, though the greatest archers of the Kurus stand in their way. Who now lives that knows it as well as I?”

“He would have pursued you until his death, but that your father feared the anger of Prince Balabhadra.”

“I blame neither him nor my father; I regret only that Prince Balabhadra’s neutrality did not come upon him earlier, that I might have had a husband my father or I chose.”

“Princess,” he reprimands, and when she nods, adds, “and you must learn not to call Karna a Kuru when listening ears are about.”

Lakshmana laughs a brief peal of merriment that mingles better with the general gaiety than her wonted solemnity. “But he was not the best of the Padavas; that we know only too well. I am enough a Kaurava woman to lie if I must, to honour a man my father loved as he did my mother.”

“And you, Princess?”

“When I think of arms around me, I see only my husband; how fortunate, Uncle, that it is a true answer as well as the dutiful one.”

“Lakshmana.”

“I do not care to be in further danger, in the home of the Yadavas, with my husband who…” Fifteen days she’s been in her home again and this is the first Yuyutsu sees Lakshmana break, lose her composure; perhaps she has wept in her mother’s arms or in Dushala’s. “If he were such a one as his father, I could have forged happiness with my husband; with such as he is, I seek only safety.”

“You know of your mother’s hopes,” he essays when she has turned again to look at Parikshita babbling joyfully on.

“I know my husband, and I know the love his father bears him, and the love my uncles bear my father-in-law. I know what such love does to the hopes of women. Do not speak to me of hopes, Uncle, let me have what I can of peace.”

On the day after Parikshit’s coronation as Crown Prince of Hastinapuri and Indraprastha, Yudhisthira grants boons to those who seek them, in his great-nephew’s name. Parikshit himself sits on his grandmother’s lap, Panchali and Partha flanking him and distracting him with sweets. The boons asked are of a nature to rouse waves of laughter, and make the little prince dance in Princess Subhadra’s gentle grip, delighted to be at the centre of so much attention. Bhima asks for permission to cook a feast in Parikshit’s name, Nakula to give milch cows to villagers in need, Princess Prabhavati to dedicate a temple to Lord Indra, long neglected among the Yadavas, and Prince Bhanu a school for worthy young men of the merchant castes. Even formidable Satyajit, King of Panchal with his score of dead brothers and nephews, asks to donate Parikshit’s weight in gold to the consecration of Khandavaprastha as sacred ground, a request that sends a howl of laughter rising from among the Yadavas, aimed perplexingly at Princess Satyabhama.

Into the dying echoes of laughter steps Princess Bhanumati, robed austerely in white and bedecked with pearls, like a wave of the Ganga crashing ashore. In her wake comes Dushala, like a raft towed by a swan-ship, and takes Yuyutsu’s proffered hand, the seat empty next to his. Now they are three, when Yuyutsu had thought to be the only Kaurava at court, their father unwilling and Lakshmana absent and the other Princesses uninterested. Even Bhanumati has come to court only once before since he’s returned, and that to coax her daughter into speech.

“You should have told me,” he murmurs to Dushala, as Prince Balabhadra pledges to teach Parikshit as he taught his father and great-uncle, and then glances askance at the widow of his most famous pupil.

“We only found out this morning ourselves,” Dushala whispers back, “but it is true enough. Have you seen Vrishaketu?”

Yuyutsu gestures to Partha, leaning forward to chuck his grandson under the chin and then back to clasp the hand of his nephew, still smiling. “There is an awful symmetry to it.”

Dushala sighs. “He’ll be safe enough, whatever happens now. His mother was worrying.”

Balabhadra takes his seat; Bhanumati steps out in front of the throne, and sinks to her knees in front of it, her hands clasped and head lowered, a suspicion of tears on her face. Panchali turns in her seat to dart a speaking glance at Sahadeva, and is answered with a minute shake of the head.

“I have a boon to ask of you, Majesty, but a boon in truth, and no favour in disguise. My time for granting favours has fled, and now I may only ask.”

“Ask,” Yudhisthira says, “and we will judge how it is to be granted.”

“I would have you intercede with your Yadava kin, Majesty.”

“The Yadavas are before your eyes,” Balabhadra calls. “What need have you of intercession, if you crave of us a boon that is just?”

“My lord is gracious,” Bhanumati says, and bows again. 

“If it is to do with Lakshmana,” Pradyumna essays, “we think of her as a sister.”

Prince Bhanu nods assent, and Princess Satyabhama adds, “She has been a daughter to me these eight years; I must know what worries her mother.”

“It is a balm to my heart that my daughter has found other mothers, and siblings, especially now that her own are dead, yet I fear in speaking out I might deprive her of such shelter as she has, and remain unable to provide her with any other.”

“Speak,” Sahadeva says, “and let not your courage fail you.”

“It touches upon the honour of my lord Krishna,” Bhanumati answers, “is it strange that fear grips my heart?”

His wives laugh, and Princess Rukmini says, “I promise you we have heard every possible insult to his high honour. Do not keep us waiting.”

“The day before Prince Parikshit’s coronation, Princess Prabhavati received a letter from Dwaraka, and shared its contents with my daughter, who has since taken to her bed, turning a deaf ear to any attempts to rouse her. I have heard since that you will soon return to Dwaraka and would beg the favour of keeping Lakshmana with me while she grieves.”

“What does your daughter grieve, that she must heal here among the Kurus?” Princess Jambavati leans forward in her seat, her face a grim mask. “We have given her time enough to grieve her father.”

“Who can know how long grief lives in the heart? My mother died a dozen years ago and still on dewy mornings I hear her voice in birdsong and I weep,” Bhanumati parries. “But Lakshmana grieves not the loss of her father’s life, but her husband’s love.”

It is possible to see when Prince Pradyumna pales, how closely he resembles his mother, their faces set together as they whisper.

“He once did great deeds to gain her,” Satyaki drawls, “has he now forsaken her, when she needs him most?”

“That his heart strays to another while she is grief-struck is loss any woman may have to bear, and if it was only that I would not beg to keep her with me. The women of the Yadavas are as brave as they are beautiful, and my daughter, however lovely she may have been when Prince Samba’s eyes first rested on her, cannot compare, as no mortal woman may with an apsara. But that he trifles with one of Lord Krishna’s wives causes her grief from which I cannot shake her in so little time, nor can I hope for her health if in Dwaraka, when the very news of his love has so shaken her.”

Jambavati growls, a low noise that travels spines and climbs blood. “Have you any proof of this?”

“Only what Princess Prabhavati told Lakshmana and Lakshmana told me; for truth you must ask the princess. I beg you, let me keep my daughter with me, that she might heal from her grief among those whose greatest care is for her.”

She stays on her knees with hands folded together and eyes lowered, as Pradyumna and Prabhavati murmur confirmation to Princess Rukmini, the picture of serene determination. Here is one, Yuyutsu thinks of a sudden, who is a pupil, not of Shakuni but of Queen Gandhari, and makes of unflinching truth her greatest weapon.

The whispers thronging the hall stifle and still, and Dushala’s grip on his hand grows painful, and finally Krishna rises, and raises Bhanumati to her feet, and puts his lotus-pink palm on her forehead, and says, “Tathastu.”


End file.
